GEORGE Brown was born in 1866, at the age of four he was living in his grandfather’s house in Lower Lux Street, who was still working as a ‘Navvy’ at the age of 70.

Also living in the house was George’s unmarried mother, who was employed as a ‘Housekeeper’ for George’s grandfather. From columns in the Cornish Times, George appears to have been quite a tearaway in his teenage years.

June 28, 1879 — ‘George Brown of Lower Lux Street, aged 13, was climbing across the rods of Bolitho Viaduct, near Liskeard Railway Station, and after going some distance he became exhausted and let go of his hold and fell a distance of about 40 feet, luckily falling on a small tree which partly broke his fall, he escaped with a severe shaking’.

July 27, 1881 — ‘George Brown, 15, who had absconded from Liskeard and apprehended at Plymouth, was charged [before the Magistrates] with having been found hiding in a barrel in the stores of Mr W J Humphries, a grocer of Fore Street, for an unlawful purpose. Having been before the bench on previous occasions, he was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment and three years in a reformatory’.

Soon after serving his sentence, George married, moved to Exeter and began a career as an ‘Asylum Attendant’ at the Wonford House Asylum, now known as the Exe Vale Hospital. His wife Sarah took care of ‘Domestic Duties’ and their only child, Fred, worked for the London & South West Railway as a ‘Fireman’ at the Exmouth Junction station.

By Brian Oldham, Liskeard Museum volunteer and Bard of the Gorsedh Kernow